ASU Deserves An ‘F’ For Its Failure To Uphold Free Speech

ASU Deserves An ‘F’ For Its Failure To Uphold Free Speech

By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |

Universities are supposed to be the “marketplace of ideas.” With a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), you would think that Arizona State University (ASU) would understand this. But apparently, the school would rather be just another woke university that shuts down free speech. Now, the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development—a center of the Barrett Honors College—and its executive director Ann Atkinson have found out the hard way.

Back in February, Atkinson organized an event on “Health, Wealth, and Happiness” as part of a series from the Lewis Center focused on connecting students with professionals who can offer career and life advice. Speakers for the event included Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki, radio talk show host and founder of Prager U Dennis Prager, founder and president of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, and heart-transplant cardiologist Radha Gopalan. For a university that offers classes on subjects like witchcraft and critical theories of sexuality, this event felt pretty tame by comparison. But the mere mention of these conservative speakers caused more than 75 percent of the Barrett Honors College faculty to have a meltdown…

>>> CONTINUE READING >>> 

Arizona, We Have A Problem: The State Of S.T.E.M. Education

Arizona, We Have A Problem: The State Of S.T.E.M. Education

By Diane Douglas and Dr. Peter Pingerelli |

Some remember the live broadcast of Apollo 8 orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968. Over 1/4 of the world’s population listened in, as the crew read from the Book of Genesis. The United States of America led in space exploration, and we were another step closer to man stepping onto the moon’s surface: an achievement requiring education, dedication, courage, and perseverance of thousands of men and women.

And yet it was a simple analog device called a slide rule that helped us achieve this goal. With over 5 million parts in the Apollo Saturn V spacecraft, astronauts, engineers, scientists, and students routinely used slide rules to make the Apollo program a reality while also allowing users to develop and enhance mental skills when calculating an answer.

We certainly don’t advocate revitalizing this nostalgic masterpiece of technology with the advances of graphing calculators and computers, but there’s something remarkable and important about continuously exercising our mental capacities as we become seemingly more dependent upon our newfangled digital world. Today, we need to simply ask Google, Alexis, or Siri to answer a question as waves of artificial intelligence increasingly sweep into our culture and educational system. But can we still aspire to achieve these national aspirations of new frontiers when our country is failing to educate the upcoming generation of students desiring to become medical professionals, scientists, or engineers? How can our nation excel in these fields if our students no longer understand the math and science behind the tools?

In Arizona the results are sounding the warning bells. Of all students statewide, 60% are failing English and 67% are failing math according to the 2022 assessment. And yet all we hear from a system incapable of teaching our children basic academics are demands for more money. The Arizona state budget for 2023-24 is $17.8 billion of which $9.3 billion is allocated to K-12 education. When do we stop giving money to a system that can’t do what it is paid to do?

Results are also discouraging when it comes to statewide science assessments. In 2018 and 2019, 50% of students statewide were not successful at passing the AIMs science assessment, and the 2021 and 2022 results from the new assessment AzSCI are yet to be made public.

And what about the educational rigor and curricula developed for K-12? Are we truly preparing students to become not only critical thinkers but also future scientists and engineers? While every student may not aspire to be a doctor, scientist, or engineer, is it unreasonable to expect that a graduate leave with at least a high school level understanding of these subjects in order to be an informed member of our society? Have Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S.T.E.M.) initiatives provided the needed reforms? Are our general educational and STEM dollars being directed to impactful programs or only those that merely mirror the political agenda? Comparing the two philosophies is like comparing the difference between environmental conservationists such as President Theodore Roosevelt versus environmental activists like Greta Thunberg.

We offer considerations that need to be coupled to reforms that don’t just nibble around the edges but take significant bites at improving our state’s educational system.

The following steps, we believe, offer a starting point.

  • Focus on fundamentals of reading, math, and science. Just as phonics is the gateway to a good reader, a solid foundation in arithmetic is quintessential. Students need to know multiplication tables, how to divide without using a calculator, percentages, and the difference between fractions and decimals. In 2018, 79 countries administered the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to more than 600,000 students in public and private schools measuring 15-year-olds’ ability to use reading, mathematics, and science knowledge and skills to prepare them for workforce and educational challenges. The U.S. students ranked 8th in reading, 30th in math, and 11th in science. These scores have remained stagnant for decades with no foreseeable improvements. This concern is perhaps best summarized by the words of the Apollo 13 Commander James A. Lovell, “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem here” when the spacecraft service module’s oxygen tank ruptured.
  • Our big math problem with K-12. Competency in basic mathematics is not just the domain of students motivated to be scientists and engineers. Our society and individual freedoms function best and are protected when its members are educated. How many times have we visited a deli counter, and the worker does not know that 1/4 of a pound fractionally represents 0.25 on their digital scale. We fear the fundamentals of math are not being adequately practiced in too many of Arizona’s classrooms. Practicing and drilling mathematical concepts and calculations builds and strengthens the connections in our brains. Student athletes continuously practice skills of the game, pianists translate brain connections and movements into music. And while practicing math skills may seem boring and redundant it is nonetheless imperative for long-term learning. Perhaps a solution is to stop cramming in new curricula that may be interesting, but do not fortify long-term learning. Too often, incoming high school freshman lack the basic arithmetic skills to be successful in algebra. Like all endeavors requiring skills, math must be practiced over and over to ensure the necessary competencies.
  • STEM education MUST be more than STEM entertainment. Most people are intrigued by science and exploration. Early on in primary education (K-4), it is important to capture interest in young minds. But as students progress in their interest in science careers, there is a necessity in STEM programs to introduce the rigors of math and science into the program’s curriculum. It may be a load of fun to fly a drone or launch a model rocket, but it should be accompanied with the key scientific principles and the underlying math that is age appropriate.
  • Curriculums should NOT be reimagined from proven methods for science education. For example, as pointed out in a recent publication, “Science education needs to overcome its habitual biting reflex against ‘the’ Scientific Method and realize its potentials as well as its limitations….” The author continues, “Vetoing ‘the’ Scientific Method even from introductory science at the primary level might actually do harm…” (Science & Education (2021) 30:1037–1073). The article goes on to explain why scientific inquiry should not supplant the scientific method which provides a clear and easy to understand approach to scientific discovery in the natural world.
  • Qualified S.T.EM. Teachers. We believe an effective teacher needs three things – a passion for the subject they teach, good communication skills, and knowledge of the subject they teach “inside-out.” But too often many of our teachers, while possessing the first two criteria, are deemed “Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)” in areas that were not their college major. We believe this is the most troublesome for high school science courses but also affects seventh and eighth graders. Moreover, we assert non-SME teaching results in omissions of fundamental scientific concepts, and in our opinion, leads students into adopting an “emotional science” curriculum that is often ideologically driven. Shouldn’t students be well-versed in the carbon cycle and its stages before adapting scenarios that our planet faces imminent catastrophic consequences in five years? Students need critical information to intelligently support or reject such hypotheses. We understand the problem of teacher shortages in Arizona — particularly in math and the natural sciences — but asking a teacher to teach without the academic background results in poorer learning outcomes as demonstrated by state assessment scores.
  • Reinforce objective truth of science and emphasize academic excellence in Arizona K-12 classrooms. Our K-12 classroom curriculum needs to refocus on objective truths of scientific principles unfettered by personal beliefs or emotional activism. We are concerned that students are too often asked how they feel about a subject before teaching them the facts about the subject. If our students don’t understand basic underlying principles that are always true about the natural world, how can they engage in meaningful debate or constructive controversy on any topic when venturing into a complex world filled with YouTube experts. Let’s avoid spending our valuable educational dollars by putting the subjective activism cart before the horsepower of true knowledge. We need to better train teachers with the ability to deliver curriculum focused on the broader understanding of scientific principles and processes.

    It is our hope that policymakers and those responsible for curriculum development will examine these considerations. It is sad to witness a college freshman with aspirations to become a medical doctor that doesn’t possess the basic skills to pass general chemistry. A student retorts, “I don’t understand why I’m failing; I got an A in all my high school science classes.” Such gaping disconnects between the knowledge and skills needed to succeed and the curricula being taught must be resolved.

    The data is clear that our education system is not delivering for our students, and we should no longer abandon the scientific method of observing, hypothesizing, experimenting, and analyzing when it comes to our students. The predominate hypothesis has been that better education is achieved with accelerated funding and recently removing results-based metrics. The scholar Thomas Henry Huxley pointedly captures our concern, “The great tragedy of Science,” he wrote, is “the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

    Will our educational system allow us to reach the next adventure and witness new planetary horizons? It is interesting that when James Lovell was an astronaut for both the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions, being part of the triumph and first to leave Earth’s orbit and then confronting the challenges that Apollo 13 faced, he used a slide rule.

    Diane Douglas is the former Arizona superintendent of public instruction; Peter Pingerelli is an associate adjunct in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology at Grand Canyon University. Ms. Douglas served on the Peoria U.S.D. governing board 2005-2012; president 2008 and 2009; Dr. Pingerelli serves on the West-MEC governing board 2017-present and is the current board chairman. Both are also on the Board of Directors for the Earth and Space Expedition Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

    News Flash: Free Things From Government Are Never Really Free

    News Flash: Free Things From Government Are Never Really Free

    By Dr. Thomas Patterson |

    American school children are instructed that the late 19th century, the Gilded Age, was dominated by “robber barons” who made great fortunes creating monopolies that exploited the poor and middle classes.

    Howard Zinn‘s best-selling textbook, which introduced generations of Americans to their own history, informed them that “ordinary people who lived through the Gilded Age… experienced tremendous hardships and losses… While they got poor, the rich were getting richer.” Another noted economist concurred that “the poor grew helpless, the middle class got swept away.”

    But let’s look again. In fact, by the numbers, it was a golden age for American workers.

    As Phil Gramm and Amity Shlaes documented in the Wall Street Journal, between 1870 and 1900, the national GNP rose 233%, per capita GNP surged by 90%, and wages increased 53%, all inflation adjusted. Meanwhile, food costs and other necessities fell by 70%. Better yet, the illiteracy rate fell by 46%, life expectancy rose12.5%, and infant mortality declined by 17%. The people did OK when government stayed on the sidelines.

    But Americans, then as now, misread their history and so were doomed to repeat it. Modern progressivism was born in response to the purported outrages of the plutocrats. Government controls stifled economic growth and innovation. Later, big government was credited by many with pulling us out of the depression.

    By the 1970s, the damaging effects of the dead hand of government were so obvious that Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter led a massive deregulation movement – airlines, communications, energy, and other sectors – that ushered in the tech revolution and renewed prosperity.

    But the tendency to regard socialistic policies as inherently good is so ingrained in human nature that once again we have already forgotten the lessons learned. Now the Biden administration is creating a new industrial policy in which government handouts are lavishly dispensed but conditioned on compliance with progressive mandates.

    For example, America’s semiconductor chip producers scored a $280 billion subsidy recently, on the grounds that their sector was ailing financially, and its health was so important to the economy generally, that it was, you know, too big to fail. Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo was very explicit about the strings attached, “if Congress wasn’t going to do what they should’ve done [in the Build Back Better bill], we’re going to do it in the implementation.”

    She meant it. For starters, chipmakers receiving $150 million or more in federal aid will be required to provide childcare to their employees and construction workers that has been crafted in “tandem with community stakeholders including…local groups with expertise in administering childcare” (i.e., lefty nonprofits).

    Chipmakers will also have to pay construction workers prevailing wages set by unions and abide by “project labor agreements” which allow unions to mandate conditions and benefits for all workers, union members or not.

    That’s not all. The “lucky” chipmakers must also provide “paid leave and caregiving support” to employees as well as wraparound services such as adult care, transportation, and housing assistance to the disadvantaged or underserved.

    Centralized economic planning is once again butting up against economic reality. Chip manufacturers have already been transferring production overseas because costs are 40% higher stateside. Any benefit from the subsidies will be so offset by the increased costs that the net profit may be questionable.

    Still, other industries are eagerly lining up for their government handouts. In their ceaseless efforts to socialize their losses while retaining profits to themselves, banks lobbied the FDIC to guarantee uninsured deposits without limit after the recent midsize bank collapses. Broadband providers received tens of billions in grants from states to build high-speed broadband to subsidize low-income purchases of Internet service plans.

    Years ago, EV producers received temporary subsidies as start-up inducers, which, of course, aren’t going away at all. They just keep expanding, like $523 billion over 10 years for vehicle consumer and battery production tax credits.

    As the chipmakers are discovering, the effect of all this free stuff from government is to make big businesses the compliant wards of the state. Thus, the administration imposes a cradle-to- grave welfare system through centralized industrial policy, while unconstitutionally usurping congressional authority in the bargain.

    It’s the path to nowhere – again.

    Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.

    Peoria School Board Members Advocate For Boys To Invade Girls’ Bathrooms

    Peoria School Board Members Advocate For Boys To Invade Girls’ Bathrooms

    By Tiffany Benson |

    Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) Board President David Sandoval and Board Members Bill Sorensen and Melissa Ewing have effectively silenced all women and girls on school grounds. 

    Despite hearing concerns from countless community members, the trio remains calloused and uninterested in resolving the bathroom crisis. Discussions and actions taken during board meetings tell the story of an agenda-driven district that couldn’t care less about the well-being of its students.

    On April 27, 2023, the pro-transgender board members rejected a bathroom policy proposed by Board Clerk Heather Rooks and Board Member Rebecca Hill. This is the same facility usage privacy policy Rooks advocated for at the April 13 board meeting. Essentially, the policy is intended to “ensure student safety and maintain school discipline” by providing administrative guidelines for accessing restrooms, locker rooms, and showers.

    Of course, district leadership was always aware that a cross-dressing male student at Liberty High School regularly used girls’ bathrooms for social media photo-ops. By siding with the disturbed teenager, Sandoval, Sorensen, and Ewing lost all sense of moral decency and respect for half of PUSD’s student population.

    No one knows exactly when the district started allowing biological males into female spaces. Formal communication was never provided to the public. Thus, parents were forced to wade through rumors and speculation while relying on reports from their children. It’s possible the district concealed this dangerous practice for nefarious purposes.

    In December 2022, Executive Director of Education, Christina Lopezlira, received advice from the district’s attorney to inform administrators about “emerging practices for supporting transgender students.” If parents or students object to the new guidelines, Lopezlira wrote that PUSD must “amicably address the competing interests and rights.” By February 2023, Director of Information Systems, Jill Thompson, relayed that the Synergy upgrade included an option to record students’ preferred pronouns.

    PUSD’s willingness to hide this information reveals a blatant disregard for the law and a particular disdain for familial bonds. There’s no length the administration won’t go to overthrow parental rights under Arizona’s Revised Statutes. It’s conceivable the district will soon pursue policy guidance on gender transitioning and clinical referrals without parental knowledge or consent.

    Before casting her vote on April 27, Hill stated: “I understand we’ve had multiple instances at Liberty High School where a young man has been allowed to enter the girls’ bathrooms based on his claim that he identifies as a female. The fact that the district has allowed these actions to continue unabated—without establishing an accommodation or implementing appropriate consequences—is both irresponsible and unfathomable…”

    Rooks followed suit stating that she had listened to multiple concerns from parents and students while district leaders remained silent on the issue. “It’s very disappointing that this has been going on [and] parents were not made aware of it. I think every parent in this district has a right to know what we are doing with their kids…and I think we need to move forward with this policy,” Rooks said.

    Ewing justified her opposition, “If you look at our incident reports in [PUSD], and the narrative about assaults in the bathroom, it has not come as the result of a transgender-identified student. There is not a single incident that has happened. And if you look at the nationwide data, that does not show it as well. As board members, we need to be making sure that we are making data-driven decisions.” 

    It’s unclear whether Ewing was truly unaware or willfully ignorant of the landmark case in Loudoun County, Virginia. In 2021, a male student—who identified as gender fluid and frequently utilized girls’ facilities—sexually assaulted two female students. A grand jury later found district administrators “failed at every juncture” to properly report the violent crimes, and school board members were “deliberately deprived of information” until the second incident occurred.

    Sandoval and Ewing maintained that their votes align with Title IX while Sorensen flat out refused to explain his position. During the June 22 board meeting, one parent’s criticisms finally compelled Sorensen to respond, “What I can tell you is that I was convinced that people don’t really want to listen…the end vote is ultimately what mattered.”

    Although Sorenson agreed he could have been more transparent during the voting process, he figured that inclusive isn’t a “bad word” and the policy proposed by Rooks and Hill was “too restrictive.”

    PUSD is increasingly becoming a dangerous place for children. If the administration can secretly change a student’s pronouns while advocating for shared private spaces, what’s next? Where are the boundaries?

    How much control will the majority of the board take from parents and give to the public education system?

    For nearly two decades, Tiffany Benson’s creative writing pursuits have surpassed all other interests. When she’s not investigating Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theories, she enjoys journaling and contributing to her blog Bigviewsmallwindow.com. Follow her on Twitter and Truth Social @WritingWoman84.

    They’re Coming For Your Children

    They’re Coming For Your Children

    By Suzanne Downing |

    From the South Lawn of the White House to the pulsing heartbeats of North America’s bustling metropolises, Democrats are stepping into the 2024 electoral fray armed with a transgender-dominated platform that makes the riots of 2020 look like a block party.

    This time, the spotlight is focused on the very future of the country: our children.

    In a repudiation of the family as the foundation of society, the Democrat platform contends, “Your children are not your children.” And it doesn’t stop there. The Democrats are loud and proud that they’re “coming for your children.”

    This was echoed by President Biden himself in April when he proclaimed at a White House event, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.”

    His sentiment was further reinforced by the LGBTQ activists during their Pride Month celebrations. The rallying cry of “We’re here. We’re queer. We’re coming for your children!” may have escaped the notice of those consuming mainstream media, but as Tucker Carlson has demonstrated, the traditional news platforms no longer control the narrative.

    America is turning to Twitter for an unfiltered snapshot of reality, and reality is not pretty. The videos of the LGBTQ agenda are being shared, as citizen journalists take over telling a truth that legacy media won’t touch.

    One could write off a single declaration of seizing the children as a mere slip of the tongue, but the unwavering commitment of the progressives suggests deliberate intent to make it a bedrock principle woven into the very fabric of the Democratic Party.

    The party finds itself flanked by a president whose mental acuity is questionable at best and demonstrators whose behaviors set a new standard for raunch. By raunch, I refer to the naked men dangling their parts at children along the Pride parade route, and naked women in heavy makeout sessions in a public fountain, while children played nearby.

    These individuals are the ones taking over our schools, libraries, parks, and city councils.

    Even a top cabinet official – Rachel Levine, the Secretary of Health and Human Services – has officially declared that it’s not just Pride Month but Pride Summer.

    Levine, a transgender individual, is determined to see the Democratic Party transgender platform permeate the cultural fabric of America. Levine’s aim is to dismantle the traditional family unit and supplant it with the state, utilizing the powers of the DHHS to cement this agenda ahead of the 2024 elections.

    Democrats like Levine appear to be drawing from the Marxist ideology of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, who famously critiqued the family and foresaw its inevitable demise.

    Engels said “On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.”

    Thus, he predicted, the family “will vanish as a matter of course.”

    His colleague Marx explained how that would be achieved: “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.”

    The American middle class, with its inherent kindness and compassion, has proven to be fertile ground for this Democrat redefinition of “love,” which amounts to actual hatred of the nuclear family.

    Leveraging the tolerance of centrists, the Left has weaponized the Christian principle of “What Would Jesus Do” to quell debate and sway major Christian denominations to their cause. It has worked with many mainstream Christians, who haven’t found a good response to that rhetorical question.

    The platform for 2024 looks set to feature a triumvirate of transgender dominance, the sexualization of children, and a critique of the traditional family. Why this direction? Because the Democratic Party, now under the influence of its most radical elements, finds itself incapable of reining in its fringe. The genie cannot be returned to the bottle.

    Parents, brace yourselves: They are coming for your children. Alphabet agencies and unions like the National Education Association, and even the State of California, have made it clear and are leading the charge.

    California Republican State Sen. Scott Wilk issued a warning: A new bill that would criminalize parents who don’t affirm their child’s “gender transition” is a bridge too far. It’s time for parents to run for the border.

    “If you love your children, you need to flee California,” he said.

    Democrats, seemingly emboldened by favorable polling in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, are confident they have the winning issues for 2024.

    For much of America, however, Democrats have simply packed the powder keg, stretched out the fuse, and are holding a match aloft.

    Daily Caller News Foundation logo

    Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Suzanne Downing is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and publisher of Must Read Alaska.

    Housing Shortage Threatens Arizona’s Economic Gains

    Housing Shortage Threatens Arizona’s Economic Gains

    By Pat Nolan |

    Last year, Arizona was the most popular state for people to relocate to. Those new arrivals helped boost our economy and put the state’s budget in the black. That’s the good news. But the bad news is that the state is falling behind in building homes to meet the needs of current families as well as newcomers.

    Some may say that is just fine because they liked the Grand Canyon State before those people moved here. But they likely haven’t considered the consequences when the government restricts new housing.

    The demand for housing goes up as families have children, residents get pay raises, and workers bring their skills and talents to our state. We celebrate these events, and to make sure it continues, we must allow the supply of housing to meet this increased demand.

    When governments restrict the supply of new housing, it reduces the choices available to buyers, which drives up the cost of their new homes. It is the buyers who bear the cost of these restrictive policies. This year Arizona has a shortfall of 270,000 housing units, and that deficit in housing will continue for years to come.

    This shortage of housing is quickly putting our state beyond the reach of many qualified young workers. If businesses can’t attract capable workers, the owners will think long and hard before moving their business here or expanding their current operations. And that’s bad news for all Arizonans because businesses pay the lion’s share of our taxes. Without a healthy economy, the state budget will slide into deficits again. And that means cutbacks for schools and roads.

    If Arizona is to remain prosperous, we must be attractive and affordable for new businesses and new residents. As The Wall Street Journal wrote, “The shortfall of affordable housing hurts America’s businesses and the broader economy by preventing workers from living in areas with economic opportunities but high housing costs. Employers are forced to operate below their potential because they can’t attract or retain workers.”

    Local land use restrictions bear most of the blame for the housing shortage. In many areas, it is hard or impossible to add a casita for an aging parent or young renter. Local regulations often prohibit empty nesters from renting a single bedroom to a senior. And cities often dictate design elements such as floor plans, styles, and materials for homes. Such restrictions do not protect public safety or health. They merely impose the preferences of politicians and bureaucrats and limit the choices for property owners.

    Navigating through the planning bureaucracy is difficult and there are frequent delays. Not long ago, it took about six months to complete the planning process. Now, it often drags on for a year or more. The clerks handling the applications do not have to pay the price for those delays. It is the new buyer who bears the added costs. But these huge added costs are not obvious to home buyers.

    One way to inform consumers would be to have a sticker price for each home, much like we see when buying a car. The sticker would list the actual costs of the land and construction. Then, the sticker would lay out the costs of the myriad government requirements, then list the multiple fees for the city, the county, and all special districts, and finally the costs for connections for electricity, gas, sewer, etc. The sticker would make it clear how much the land and construction actually cost, and what was added on by government regulations and processing.

    The Legislature had the opportunity to deal with the shortage this year but dropped the ball. Speaker Ben Toma’s HB 2536 proposed allowing property owners to build casitas attached to or in the backyard of their home, and would have allowed owners to rent a single bedroom to seniors. The bill would have also prevented cities from dictating design elements and aesthetics. Arizonans should have the right to choose the style and layout of their homes, and not have their aesthetics dictated by the bureaucracy.

    After passing the House unanimously, the Senate killed it under pressure from local politicians. Those politicos want to protect their monopoly on housing decisions, even if their decisions cause young families and seniors to be priced out of their city. I was surprised that ten Senate Republicans voted against this important bill: Bennett, Borrelli, Carroll, Hoffman, Kavanagh, Kern, Kerr, Mesnard, Rogers, and Wadsack.

    They claim they voted to kill the bill to protect the prerogatives of local government. While I agree that most decisions are better left up to officials closest to the people, I strongly dispute that local governments have unfettered power to ignore the rights of their residents. Local governments do not have the authority to dictate the color and floor plan for new homes. That goes far beyond the proper scope of their duties and interferes with the basic rights of property owners.

    I am particularly troubled that several members of the Freedom Caucus helped kill this bill. I don’t understand how they can believe that their votes to allow local politicians to excessively interfere with the rights of property owners doesn’t infringe on our basic rights. The members of the Freedom Caucus would do well to re-read Alexis de Tocqueville’s warning about the terrible impact imposed on the people by bureaucratic rules:

    “It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

    It is the duty of our state representatives to forestall efforts to make us sheep under the care of government bureaucrats. Our legislators are not elected by local governments; they are elected directly by the people. They should not think of themselves as protectors of local governments’ prerogatives; rather, they should be vigilant guardians of our freedoms no matter which level of the government tries to violate them. I would remind our legislators that our Constitution does not begin with the words “We the state and local governments” but “We the people.”

    Pat Nolan is the Director Emeritus of the Nolan Center for Justice at the American Conservative Union Foundation. He and his wife live in Prescott.